If Julian English, the doomed protagonist of Appointment in Samarra, had only had the good sense to drop by the Garfield Diner [in Pottsville, PA] and treat himself to a bacon double-cheeseburger with fries on the side and then wash it all down with a chocolate milkshake, he might have reconsidered his decision to asphyxiate himself in his car. That’s how yummy that milkshake was. (Joe Queenan, One for the Books, 182)

It’s lines like the above—lines about books I’ve never read and places I’ve never been—that kept me reading this book by Joe Queenan, despite my initial and even ongoing misgivings. While I’d never heard of Joe Queenan before, and while I quickly learned that his reading tastes and habits are so unlike my own, I simply couldn’t not finish his book. He writes with a snobbishness that almost off-putting, yet not. The more I read, the more endearing he became. This is one of the strangest yet most enjoyable memoirs I’ve read in a while.

Queenan is a professional book reviewer whose articles have been published by the New York Times, GQ, and many others. He once even hosted a short-lived BBC show on authors and their cities. When he wrote this book, he was in his 60s, looking back on the 6,000-7,000 books he’d read in his life and looking forward to the limited time he has left to read maybe a couple of thousand more. He wrote this book to recount his own adventures in reading and to give an overview of book-culture as a whole, a culture currently threatened by the digital age—he calls out the Kindle like forty times.

While I dare say I’ve read 2% of the books he names in this memoir, I didn’t feel out of the loop at all as I read. Granted, I skimmed through most of the French names in Chapter 6, but the vast majority of the book, while feeling somewhat pretentious, was cabled to earth with humor, wit, and anecdotes that just made me laugh. In fact, this is one of the most eminently quotable books I’ve read in a long time.

I’ve said that Queenan seems “snobbish” and “pretentious,” but those really aren’t the right words. I’d compare him to the painter who knows every one of the 1,004 colors on the pallet and names them without thinking, as if everyone should know what he’s talking about. This sense comes especially from his incessant name-dropping. Well, it comes from the name-dropping plus the sheer joy he finds in dropping names few people have ever heard of.

Once I realized, however, that I could read this book with James Spader’s voice as Raymond Reddington in mind, everything fit perfectly. I don’t know if Joe Queenan tops the FBI’s Most Wanted list, but with his high culture, wit, and proclivity for regaling his readers with stories of drunken romps through the streets of Paris, he is Raymond Reddington. I don’t care what he sounds like in real life.

Some of Queenan’s tastes and reading habits which differ from my own include the following:

I read anywhere and everywhere, except the bathroom, as I find this unspeakably vulgar and disrespectful to the person whose work one is reading, unless one is reading someone appalling. (2)

I do not listen to audiobooks, for the same reason I do not listen to baked ziti; it lacks the personal touch. (6)

I would rather have my eyelids gnawed on by famished gerbils than join a book club. (44)

Speed-reading is for slobs. And children’s books are for children. (79)

While I personally never speed read either, I love audio books, children’s books, and book clubs—and I get some of my best reading done in the bathroom. Sometimes I even read children’s books on my Kindle while listening to an audio book, yes, in the bathroom. No joke.

Though we don’t see eye-to-eye in these matters, I found Queenan to be incredibly insightful in so many other areas. I whittled down my long list of highlights to just these nine favorite lines:

Literature is an endless series of expeditions, some planned, some unplanned, all elating. (21)

Good books do not invite unanimity. They invite discord, mayhem, knife fights, blood feuds. (44)

I think of libraries as great places to pick up reading material I would never dream of purchasing and might not even want to keep around the house. (49)

I used to think that I kept stopping and staring books because I could never find the right one. Untrue. Virtually all the books I start are the right one. It’s the fact that all these books are so good that makes me stop reading them, as I am in no hurry to finish; the bad ones I could whip through in a few hours. The problem is simple: There are just too many good books, and I would like to at least sample all them. Reading is like visiting the Louvre: Just because you adore the Titians doesn’t mean you won’t be tempted by the Bellinis. Love doesn’t work that way. (65)

Every second spent reading mediocre books is time that could be spent reading great ones. (71)

I think it is important to have goals in life, as long as you understand that achieving those goals will not make you happy. (74)

Being asked to write a blurb for a friend is like being asked to give a friend’s gross, dysfunctional kid a summer job. I may like you; that doesn’t mean I have to like your swinish progeny. (137)

When I asked my daughter if reading was escapism, she answered: “No, reading is the opposite of escapism. Is it introversion so extreme that you come out the other side of yourself.” (213)

Reading books may make you smarter than other people. It does not make you better. (215)

I’m shocked that I super-enjoyed this memoir on books and reading, and I recommend it to other book lovers out there. It’s one that’ll inspire you to keep reading and maybe even inspire you to develop a plan to ensure that you do just that.

©2020 E.T.

Check Out These Books about Reading:

• The Seven Joys of Reading by Mary Wright Plummer (1856)
• The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac by Eugene Field (1895)
• Figures of Speech by Arthur Quinn (1982)
• The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (2011)
• One for the Books by Joe Queenan (2012)